Posted on 06/10/2019 2:34:59 PM PDT by yesthatjallen
The CEO of one of the top U.S. companies that manufactures voting machines called on Congress this week to pass legislation requiring the use of paper records for all voting systems, while pledging that his company would no longer sell machines without these records.
Tom Burt, the CEO of Election Systems & Software (ES&S), wrote in an op-ed for Roll Call that the need to pass election security legislation to restore voter faith in elections is “essential to the future of America.”
“If Congress can pass legislation that requires a paper record for every voter and establishes a mandated security testing program for the people making voting machines, the general public’s faith in the process of casting a ballot can be restored,” Burt wrote.
Burt pledged that ES&S would no longer sell voting machines that are “paperless” as the “primary voting device in a jurisdiction.” By paperless, Burt meant voting machines that do not print out a paper record of each vote, which can be audited following the election to make sure there was no interference in the vote.
The security of voting systems has been under increasing scrutiny since attempted Russian interference in the 2016 presidential elections, during which cyber actors targeted the systems of at least 21 states.
This is the latest step by ES&S to ensure customers of the security of its machines, coming after the company submitted its machines to the Idaho National Laboratory for testing in April, which was done to ensure the “strength of equipment deemed critical infrastructure,” according to ES&S.
Two other top voting systems in the U.S., Dominion Voting Systems and Hart InterCivic, also told The Hill that they agree with the need for paper records of votes cast.
“All Dominion-manufactured systems produce paper and the company has never opposed requirements for paper records,” a spokesperson for Dominion said. “We’re on record at all levels — federal, state and local — in urging government support for helping customers that want to upgrade from paperless systems to more modern, paper-based solutions for the sake of auditing and resilience.”
A spokesperson for Hart InterCivic told The Hill that the company has “always enthusiastically supported paper ballot options for voting systems,” adding that Hart is “very busy” helping voting jurisdictions around the U.S. to “move towards paper-ballot voting with the most secure, accessibly, auditable, intuitive and usable certified voting system technology and the best service and support in the industry.”
The comments from the three voting machine companies came after four top Senate Democrats sent letters to the groups in March asking about the security measures taken to protect machines from interference and criticizing the companies for a “lack of meaningful innovation” in securing systems.
The Democrats were Sens. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Mark Warner (Va.), Jack Reed (R.I.) and Gary Peters (Mich.).
Whatever the machine prints, it does so because the programmer wrote the code that way, any hacker can bypass changing the print routine and just change the data written to the data base.
What is needed are paper ballots that are both human and machine readable. It has to be a system that anyone can understand. Anything else is just an invitation to cheat.
Exactly. We need physical source material that can, if necessary, be counted by hand.
That's what we have here in Oklahoma. Works great.
Or Vice Versa
If the programmer bypasses the print routine but writes something different to the database, then there is an audit trail that indicates that the software was tampered with. Someone has to audit the paper trail to catch it, but that’s the point of the paper trail.
Conversely, the programmer could bypass writing to the database and alter what’s written to the paper trail. Then if they actual results weren’t what the programmer desired, they could call for an audit of the paper trail showing that there is was a problem, when there really wasn’t.
The voter should receive a copy of their vote on paper as a further check. If the voter confirms the paper matches their vote while at the voting booth, then you know the paper trail is correct. And you have means of auditing the electronic record.
The printout can be different from the actual vote.
Ensuring the integrity of our elections doesn't seem to have a high priority.
I'm not asking for federal control but there should be clear uniform standards and guidelines every state can agree to so 'mistakes' don't happen.
“Pay us big bucks for this electronic piece of junk and then print the votes on paper like you did before.”
Sure- so they can sell a whole $hitload of new machines to states that don’t have that capability...
Is this the voting machine company that Soros owns? I heard he owns one — maybe Diebold?
Not a federal issue.
Yep. The other thing I noticed is the certification process he asked for which would heavily limit competition.
And every one must be accounted for, or the RATs will continue premarking them by the thousands in the back room of the union hall in order to replace the legitimately voted ones during transport. Remember the "dimpled chads" in 2000? the only way to get that effect was to punch a stack of them at once. Criminal fraud.
The Dems can’t get their vote out and if they do,they can’t be sure the vote is for the Democrats.
Sounds logical.
Also, the manufacturer would know that people can tamper with the machines and the only sure thing is a paper record.
Soros and the RATs don’t want anything but electronic machines so they can manipulate them for voter fraud.
How about voter ID with the paper trail.
All this tells me is that Democratvote fraud has moved beyond tampered machines to other methods. Ask a Democrat about Voter ID and all this concern about vote integrity flies right out the window.
Exactly.
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